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Allwinner is the rare, if not the only SOC ARM chip vendor, from China that sort of embraced Linux/GPL/LGPL in a public way to some extent. The rest of those si
by ausjke 12y ago
Allwinner is the rare, if not the only SOC ARM chip vendor, from China that sort of embraced Linux/GPL/LGPL in a public way to some extent. The rest of those similar companies does pretty much nothing meaningful at all, they use Linux too, just no public release whatsoever. In that sense, it's the least evil as far as GPL violation goes.
- joezydeco 12y agoI'll have to disagree there. Freescale does an excellent job of putting all of their stuff up on Github. The iMX6 family is a joy to work with thanks to their efforts. https://github.com/freescale https://github.com/freescale They also go above and beyond with documentation. No NDA/MDA needed. Tens of thousands of pages of freely available technical reference including the entire TRMs for the SoCs: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX6Q&fpsp=1&tab=Documentation_Tab http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?co...
- convivialdingo 12y agoI have to disagree here a bit as well. Allwinner has really helped open up RockChip code as well. For instance, the vpu kernel driver (GPL license) is now open: https://github.com/omegamoon/rockchip-rk30xx-mk808/blob/master/arch/arm/plat-rk/vpu_service.c https://github.com/omegamoon/rockchip-rk30xx-mk808/blob/mast... And the libstagefright (includes libvpu) as Apache license: https://github.com/HermanChen/Rockchip_4.2_release_libstagefright https://github.com/HermanChen/Rockchip_4.2_release_libstagef... The Mali GPU driver is still stuck in proprietary limbo though, AFAIK. Rockchip can't release the code without ARM's permission, and ARM has only released partial support as of now. They claim that it's working, though I am still trying to get a complete X11/Wayland driver running myself (mostly due to all the android dependencies which I don't need under pure Linux) http://community.arm.com/message/21331 http://community.arm.com/message/21331 http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-source-mali-t6xx-gpu-kernel-device-drivers/ http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-s... So things are getting better, though there is still some wide gaping holes in development.
- briandh 12y agoAMLogic seems to be decent, though I haven't had to delve into it personally so I can't say for sure how complete their source releases are. See here, for instance: http://openlinux.amlogic.com:8000/download/ARM/ http://openlinux.amlogic.com:8000/download/ARM/
- jpierre 12y agoNot for naught, AMLogic is an American company founded and HQ'd in Santa Clara CA - though that shouldn't detract from their source releases.
- mschuster91 12y ago> The rest of those similar companies does pretty much nothing meaningful at all, they use Linux too, just no public release whatsoever. That depends on the end manufacturer. There are lots of Mediatek source code dumps on Github, for example. The problem is that the chipset manufacturers don't actively tell their customers what they are obliged to do under the license - and so they assume that the chipset vendor has given the code and docs under "gongkai" terms.
- anonbanker 12y agoI have full documentation and a working kernel source for rockchip rk3x88 chips.